More Text Effects

Experiment with text. Also, go to YouTube and look at all of the videos on type effects. Once you understand the basics of creating your type, you will easily be able to emulate all of the cool type graphics and effects easily.

It is Essential to become fluent with the basics that are in this course FIRST! Once you understand those, you can play with all sorts of combinations and ideas.

Write down any new ideas or tricks so you do not forget them."

More Text Effects

Lecture Slides are screen-captured images of important points in the lecture. Students can download and print out these lecture slide images to do practice problems as well as take notes while watching the lecture.

Transcription: More Text Effects

We've been talking about text in the last couple of lessons, we've talked about linear, paragraph text, in the last lesson I showed you how to warp it, clip an object to it, make all sorts of texture and 3D kind of modifications to the text.0007

We're going to take a look in this lesson, type on a path and chrome type.0024

Chrome type is just working like crazy with a piece of type and seeing what happens, so let's get started.0030

Here's a photo I took several years back, I was on assignment shooting for the navy, and this is the Miramar Naval Air Station top gun squadron in San Diego, California--that same squadron you saw on the movie Top Gun with Tom Cruise, so we're going to put a title on this picture...0038

But instead of warping the text, we're going to put it on a pre-determined path, so we'll just follow the path.0055

You make a path with you Pen tool, so we'll highlight the Pen tool, and let's make a path...click and drag, click and drag, and click and drag and I've got us a nice path.0063

I'm going to move that point down a little bit, Command or Control, let's move this point here a little bit more, and move this one down just a hair...up in the corner, there.0076

Now we'll go to the Text tool, zoom it up so you can see this (I'm going to change the screen mode) as you move your text cursor, up to and it counters the path--notice it changes, see the way the path line, and it's still the icon.0108

We've chosen Cosmos, let's shift that to Helvetica for starters, let's drop it down to about 40 points, and we're going to go ahead and type; Top Gun Squadron...Miramar Naval Air Station...San Diego, California.0128

And we'll enter it this time with a checkmark, and there we have it.0156

Now, we're going to open up our Characters panel...close the paragraph up, don't need that, and move that up here a little bit (let's move the picture over just a hair so we can see it).0160

I think we can make this larger--let's go to 48 point and see what happens...now you notice that it got larger but we'd lost the California, but I want to show you something else--let's go back to our path--this is the Top Gun type path.0174

Notice the insertion point's over here and the path starts down here, so if we shift the whole thing over, we can pull this back in, the part that's off the end.0190

We're going to use, not the direct selection tool but the path selection tool--the black arrow right below the text icon in the Toolbox.0201

As you come up and hit the path, you see the icon changes from an arrow to a type icon, click, and two things.0211

If you are above the path, the type's on this side, if you go below the path you can flip it and put it on the other side so you can have type inside or outside.0221

We'll go back up and as you move notice, it moves the insertion point, and we're back right to the beginning, and now we can stretch the type just a little bit--let's jack it up to 50 points, and there we go--we got it pretty good.0232

Now what we're going to do...is we're going to take that layer, and move it a little bit with the arrow keys to center it...that looks pretty good.0247

Now if the wave is too much, we can also alter that; now we'll go down to our direct selection tool--this is just like the Pen tool--this is a path, click and drag across the path--we got black, black and black, we want to move just this point.0259

So Command on a Mac, Control on a PC, click and drag, we want...not the direct selection tool, my mistake.0275

Command or Control, gives you the white arrow, click outside the type, click and drag--now we've got that point, once you get right at the point, now you can shift the point, and notice how the path, once you let go, the type snaps to the path's shape that you've changed.0288

OK, now we'll go back and de-highlight it and there we have that, so now we've got the type in place, let's just add one little effect to the type; to put a drop shadow in it...we'll drop a drop shadow on...size a little bit...distance out...0307

Eight seems about nice, come on spread, move it out just a little further--there we go...OK, that looks pretty good, and let's go ahead and stroke that text.0335

We'll stroke it two pixels, click OK, get outside of that again and there you have it; type on a path and how to modify it--remember this is the Pen tool, so you're going to use the Pen tool to create the path, you also will use the Pen tool, Command or Control as the arrow to...0349

Once you highlight, and highlight the type path, not the work path, you can now click and drag across that, get the individual points, and move them around to readjust the shape of the type and also with the path selection tool, allows you to have it top or bottom, and also to change the insertion point position on the type.0373

I like that, the red really snaps and it looks kind of cool, sorry just enjoying my work there for a moment.0412

Alright, here we have an untitled document...and we're going to make chrome type--let me make a new document--I want to change the sizing.0418

Command on a Mac, Control on a PC plus the letter N makes new document, we're going to make it 7 inches wide, 3 inches high and we're going to make this 400 DPI so it's got lots of resolution, change the screen mode so I can move it around.0429

Type tool, let's correct that, make it E, commit it, and I'm going to change that from Helvetica regular to Helvetica just plain bold Helvetica and I think the reason it's italic--we had the artificial italic on in the Character panel, turn that off, and I want to drop it down to maybe 110% just a little, that looks pretty good.0479

and I'll move it over and let's center it in the...document, and I'm going make the background of the document a very light gray...just so it's not glaringly white because the type itself will have some white.0504

Now, this is the foreground color so Option delete or Alt delete on a PC will fill the background, so let's make this type color black...that's odd...oh, the type layer, sorry.0524

Now, we have a type layer--we could play with it, make it 3D, what I'm going to do--this is not, that is Helvetica, that's fine, OK.0550

What I'm going to do here, is I'm going to duplicate that layer; Command or Control+J or duplicate on the dropdown menu, or duplicate over here--now we have a duplicate, we'll turn off the original, and I'm going to have to turn this layer--this time instead of playing with it as a vector type layer, we're going to rasterize it like we did the last time.0561

Layer, Rasterize Type...OK, and what I'm going to do is select the rastered layer; Command or Control click the thumbnail, and I'm going to make a gradient, and I'm going to make the gradient--remember how to do the gradient changes?0587

This is a color stop, I'm going to click that color stop and we're going to make that jet black, and on the right hand mend we're going to make that one just a little gray...OK.0609

Click Ok, and now we're going to do the opacity at 100%...Command or Control+H to hide the crawling ants, Shift key to make sure it's a straight, vertical line, and I'm going to drag the gradient...on the chrome type...there we go.0623

We're ready to go, what I want to do, is I want to Bevel in and Boss, make a 3D effect on the type, so we're going to change the depth a little bit, up the size until the type looks nice...soften it just a little bit to round it off back into--that looks pretty good right there.0646

OK, now our type effects are set--now you notice the type effects will not stay with it once we start to do some other things to the actual type and move it around, so we need to flatten it into this rastered layer, rather than have it an attached effect.0668

The way to do that, is below the layer, highlight the layer below it, create a new blank layer...there it is, Command or Control highlight both of them, now we can merge layers, and it will retain the 3D effect on that rastered layer.0689

What we're going to do, is we're going to make...let's load the selection; Command or Control click, we're going to make a curves adjustment layer.0715

Every time I do this it comes out different so it'll be interesting to see what happens this time.0727

Now here's the Curves panel, I'm going to take the shadows about in the middle and move it all the way up...and we're going to pull that same distance on the other side and pull it all the way down for a reverse curve and look what happened.0732

Right here, it looks like pretty much brushed aluminum, but the harsher it gets, the more it looks like chrome, look at that...and if I pull this back and over...I get it more or less...a true metallic chrome look, how about that, huh?0747

But we're not done yet...let's close off--oops, close off the Character panel and get the Properties panel over here, so now there's a basic chrome type, alright?0769

We've gone from our original text to a chrome, regular layer--that's the rastered layer--and by putting the curves adjustment layer on it, we have altered it so that it looks like chrome.0782

We can take this even a step further, it's just beginning--you can play with this as far as you want to go.0800

Let's duplicate this adjustment layer and see what happens; Command or Control+J.0805

Now we have--oops, Command or Control+J, and look what happened now, it went absolutely berserk, let's see what happens if we pull the opacity back--wow, look at that...oh, that's kind of cool.0812

Off and on...it added some more dimension to the chrome, so that was basic clean chrome type.0824

We've added another dimension to it, let's take it a step further and add some color to it.0832

We're going to make a hue saturation layer, and we're going to colorize the type; click the colorize button--oops, my mistake...trash the layer, Command or Control, load the selection for the word chrome, and then make the adjustment layer so it's not the whole thing.0837

Less saturation, right there, kind of a bluish, chrome type, so we started...by making the word chrome, just in a type layer.0878

Rasterize the type layer, and added in a Boss to it, Bevel in and Boss, and then we flattened that Bevel in and Boss adjustment out of there by putting a layer below the type and combining the two with merge layers...0889

Added a curves layer, and remember the curves layer has a reverse curve--rather drastic (can even adjust that a little more)...play with it just a hair...that still looks pretty--oh, there you go, just a little bit more right there.0910

Then we duplicated that layer but now it's going to be slightly different and it adds another effect to it--we could even drop that back probably...we're only at 42% because the higher the percentage, the more the change, so you can play with that.0929

Then we put hue saturation on top of that with the colorize, changed the saturation and the hue, and came up with colored chrome type.0945

So there you have...a couple of more ways to play with type--what we did here this time, we did type on a path...0957

In which we took and created a curved path, created type on top of it, moved it around, changed the path.0971

We also...did chrome type, in which from scratch we created a chrome type effect.0979

Related Books

Educator.com recommends that students purchase Adobe Photoshop CS6 for use with the Educator Adobe Photoshop CS6 course. Photoshop CS6 is the professional standard for image edition and includes features like Content-Aware Patch, Mercury Graphics Engine and tool updates not included in CS5.